NASA's upcoming landing of the first-ever mission to study the heart of Mars will be the topic of a media briefing at 1:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 31 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The briefing will air live on NASA Television, the agency's website and the NASA InSight Facebook page.

NASA's InSight Mars Lander (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will land on the Red Planet at approximately 3 p.m. EST (noon PST) Monday, Nov. 26. InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed. The lander's instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes and a probe to monitor the flow of heat in the planet's subsurface.